Boozhoo Books | Eat the Ones You Love
Log in or Sign up
Eat the Ones You Love
Sarah Maria Griffin
Save to Your Books
100% of affiliate revenue supports Boozhoo Books
“Do you mind me asking—what kind of help do you need?”
After losing her job and her fiancé and moving back from the city to live with her parents, Shell Pine needs some help. And according to the sign in the window, the florist shop in the mall does too. Shell gets the gig, and the flowers she works with there are just the thing she needs to cheer up. Or maybe it’s Neve, the beautiful shop manager, who is making her days so rosy?
But you have to get your hands dirty if you want your garden to grow—and Neve’s secrets are as dark and dangerous as they come. In the back room of the flower shop, a young sentient orchid actually runs the show, and he is hungry . . . and he has a plan for them all.
When the choices are to either bury yourself in the warmth of someone else’s fertile soil, or face the cold and disappointing world outside—which would you choose? And what if putting down roots came at a cost far higher than just your freedom?
This is a story about desire, dreams, decay—and working retail at the end of the world.
Show more
Get the Bindery app
Posts about this title from Boozhoo Books
Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Mar 16 2025
RECORDING: Women In Horror Panel
YouTube link to Women in Horror Celebration, all of the (most of the) books discussed, info about our Discord bookclubs
62 books
2
Posts about this book from across Bindery
Fat Forward Books\ \ Samantha Puc\ \ • Dec 31 2025
Join for free
I read so many books for my thesis and for work in 2025, and many of them made my list of favorite reads for the year. I also read a ton of fiction, continuing my horror streak from last year and deep-diving into new-to-me authors.
Here’s to another year of book club meetings, listening to audiobooks on my commute to therapy, and staying up way too late reading comics in bed. 💛📚
#ReadIn2025
[ID: A 6x6 grid of book covers set against a pink, orange, and yellow gradient. In black bubble font across the top of the graphic, it says, “Favorite Reads of 2025.” Black botanical sketches are in the background of the upper right and lower left corner. Samantha’s Instagram handle is in smaller, all-caps black font at the bottom of the graphic.]
14 books
2
Chanterelle Solace\ \ Sabie\ \ • Dec 19 2025
Join for free
Get a Rec from me & What my Taste in books look like
What are some books that represent your taste overall and do we have any in common? 👀
Before we dive into this, Bindery now has an option to request recs and you can go to the 🔗 in my bio and click “Get a Rec” and ask for details of what you’d like from the books I’ve read! I’m also making lists of 2026 releases in fantasy, romance and horror so far so happy to share some of these early on with you guys (these will be recs of what I’m looking forward to rather than what I’ve read) so GO GO GO 🤎
As for my taste in books, I’m never going to be the type that picks only 5 top books for the year guys and I’ve learned to accept it because honestly, what do you mean my top 5 books in one year? I would have to host a meeting with myself for a whole month to decide that 😭 So instead, you guys get my taste in books throughout various sub-genres that I yap about all the time!
Here is a list of the books (if you prefer to read through it or for accessibility needs)🤎: Cottagecore: 🍄 Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries 🍄 After the Forest by Kell Woods 🍄 A Witch’s Guide to Love and Poison by Aamna Qureshi 🍄 The Geographer’s Map to Romance by India Holton 🍄 The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 🍄 An Arrow to the Heart by K.R. Bacher
Cozy Fantasy: 🍄 The Baby Dragon Cafe by Aamna Qureshi 🍄 Legend & Lattes by Travis 🍄 The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong 🍄 The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong 🍄 Watermoon by Samantha Sotto Yambao 🍄 The Spellshop by Sangu Mandanna
Witchycore: 🍄 The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright 🍄 House of Frank by Kay Synclaire 🍄 The Lone Wolf Cafe by Sydney Wilder 🍄 The Witch and the Tsar by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore 🍄 A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna 🍄 Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-Fassi
Retellings, Fairy Tale & Historical Fantasy: 🍄A Sorceress comes to Call by T.Kingfisher 🍄 What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez 🍄 Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross 🍄 We Shall be Monsters by Tara Sim 🍄 The Briar Book of the Dead by A.G Slatter
The rest is in my pinned comment!
#fantasybooks #topbooksof2025 #favoritebooks
74 books
1
Chanterelle Solace\ \ Sabie\ \ • Oct 8 2025
Join for free
12 botanical horror books recs to become one with the moss this season👀
Do you read any botanical horror or spooky books for autumn? This is a range from pure botanical horror, to Mushroomcore, and horromance👀
Join my bindery through the 🔗 in my bio for more content like this🤎
Here are most of the botanical horror I’ve read in the past year or so! I am currently also reading Mexican Gothic and Girl in the Creek (both of which I’m enjoying): 🍄 Don’t Let the Forest in 🍄 Graveyard Shift 🍄 Predatory Natures 🍄 Human Scars on Planet Skin 🍄 What Moves the dead (and book 2) 🍄 Eat the ones you Love 🍄 Greenteeth 🍄 Midnight Rooms 🍄 They Bloom at Night 🍄 Swallowed 🍄 My Throat An Open Grave 🍄 Nettle and Bone
Here are the two I am currently reading: 🍄 Mexican Gothic 🍄 Girl in The Creek
Have you read any of them?
#botanicalhorror #horrorbooks #books
14 books
6
Fat Forward Books\ \ Samantha Puc\ \ • Jul 6 2025
Join for free
\ \ Join for free or login](https://fatfwdbooks.binderybooks.com/item/XBcpDwIDBkF6PNwpydlO/)
6 books
3
Fat Forward Books\ \ Samantha Puc\ \ • Jul 3 2025
Join for free
Books I Read (and Loved) January-June 2025
20 books I loved in the first half of 2025.
9 books
1
Chanterelle Solace\ \ Sabie\ \ • Jul 1 2025
Join for free
\ \
"They would be fine, certainly, but they would never be the same. They each knew the building was rotten to the core, even those of them who did not know about me growing in the rot. They loved the Crown anyway: they had come of age here, found each other here. Their lives had played out over the linoleum and under the halogen, the back-and-forth with their customers, the reek of supermarket deli and the food court, the rotating seasonal decorations, day after day, year after year, the place getting more worn and them just living through it. Thriving against it, in some ways burning all the brighter for the decay. They would be fine, after. Better than fine."\ \ \ \ GENRE: Horror with Fantasy Elements\ \ RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5\ \ FORMAT: Physical Arcs\ \ Would I recommend to others?: Yes, I absolutely loved this book. It was a whole journey in the way a horror book could be, it was all about self discovery and learning more about yourself. I hope you give it a try and get to go through the journey with Shell, Neve and Baby.\ \ Long Review:\ \ What a book. That's the only right way to begin this review because really: What a book! I loved this book and its my first book by the author. What a interesting way of incorporating a story about retail, being a florist, and finding who you are after being lost in a lifetime of trying to fit in with other people and not being true to yourself.\ \ \ \ We start this book with a help needed sign in a Florist shop inside Woodbine Crown Mall and I think that sets the tone for the rest of this book in the best and worst of ways\ \ "Shell's own voice inside her head had been so loud lately. We all need help. She imagined that whoever it was running a dank little flower shop in the Woodbine Crown probably needed a fair amount of help. Maybe not more than her, necessarily. But more than most."\ \ This book is filled with atmospheric, lyrical prose that just builds a picture about the mall, the shops and the people. I have a form of aphantasia, where I can't picture things in my mind and I think Griffin builds a beautiful image of the mall, the orchid eating plant and the eerie vibe of the environment itself. It made it feel like the mall, Baby (the plant) and the florist shop were claiming lives and keeping them committed to the area forever\ \ "There was a thick in the air that you couldn't condition out, a gelatin feeling, suffocating. It made Shell fell like she was eight, fourteen and perhaps like she was seventy-two and still here, in a shopping centre adjacent to her housing estate, still here, still in this place. It wouldn't let her leave this part of the world and she had worked so hard to get gone. She almost had."\ \ Also, I really enjoyed the chapters we get when we have a POV from Baby and from other characters. You can see the possession in Baby as a plant, that what they want and how they plan things to bring Shell and Never together, to get Shell in to their "bigger plan"\ \ \ \ "I chose Shell, make no mistake, but there was a helpful organic chemistry waiting there, too. This was no possession. I did not even lift the heat of Shell's blood any higher on the stove of her, not necessarily. Shell saw Neve's face, her smile, and took in her body, and something in Shell's own body made a decision."\ \ "She'd felt very little other than the same gradient of miserable after the extremity of her own sorrow had become boring to even her. she will find new pain to thrill through herself in no time. I will lead her there and she will, I am sure, follow me like I am a miracle.\ \ I am, though.\ \ A miracle."\ \ We begin to understand Neve, her relationship with Baby and how she comes off as super confident but essentially, Baby loves Neve and comes to like Shell because they are broken in a way other people are not. They have that in common and in this type of broken that is inside of them, Baby is able to find his way through the cracks and feed on their hurt and sadness. Baby does point out that there are others in the book he is unable to find a crack through and names this as confidence. I like to think that he feeds on a specific type of hurt, or at least that is my interpretation of it. And I think this type of hurt is the lack of belonging, the lack of being accepted fully and thoroughly.\ \ "She hadn't felt this good in a year, maybe more...This might have been my work, my pollen in the air, or it might have been that Shell was so lonely, so desperate to belong that even the run-down brutalism of a desolate shopping mall could easily feel romantic to her. The romance might have begun with Neve, but it certainly began to extend to the crown."\ \ And here it is about the people that Baby might have respected, even aknowledged the importance of but never took ownership of them like he did with Neve, first and foremost, and then Shell.\ \ "I liked Daniel. I understood him to be good. I have listened to him and what the inside of him sounds like, and he meets the pain of others with love. The things he has overcome are not what he wears in his manner. It is a deep feat to move with grace when you have been granted little to none. I would never see Daniel hurt again in his life. At night, when Daniel prays, it is for love. And love I would grant him. I am not close to him in any way other than my leaves and vines and listening —I do not hold him the way I hold my Never — but my vines are around him still. If Neve was not my favourite, my best one, it would perhaps be somebody like Daniel."\ \ "Bec had that impact on people; I witnessed it again and again. She had that same frustrating smoothness that Jen did: a confidence that I could never quite break through. I understood why she and Jen liked each other. It must have been a relief for them to be in each other's company, so little insecurity between them. I preferred, myself, to ignore Bec. I did not enjoy her."\ \ "Neve orbited her, a clumsy satellite, saying almost nothing, a face dappled with acne, eyes glassy and already holding a secret bigger than her body. She was good at secrets. Perhaps this was what drew me towards her, the first thing I liked most about her — she had a lot of space for me to grow. I would find more chambers in her for more secrets, over time, the girl a cathedral, a mall with an empty store for each bad thing she did for me, for each witnessing."\ \ Another thing that is addressed in here is the complexity of relationships and Baby definitely tries to manipulate this in different ways, especially between Neve and Shell. However, the chapters where we get a glimpse into Jen's POV are important as we get to understand who Neve is from someone who knows her in a different perspective and we get to understand what happened between them and how they end came to be\ \ "It feels like we did nothing but talk for the first few years. It was when the talking stopped that I knew it was over: you have to learn to love somebody in the quiet of themselves, as well as the noise, the chatter. I'm not sure she loved me quiet, either"\ \ Baby is a plant who wants control, who wants to outgrow and take over the world but mainly, wants to take over Neve, who he has grown to love in a possessive way. We get glimpses of Neve and how she feels that she wishes she could be rid of Baby but never could. Perhaps, Neve loves Baby in the same way when you love someone who hurts or harms you, in that you cannot help it. Baby ensures to always remind Neve that she cannot be rid of him\ \ "The Sensation of relief is like a heavy, hard thing inside the body dissolving, returning to blood. I am that heavy thing, and she cannot loosen herself of me but she still felt lightness. I said, You will never be free of me, and she said, loud, through the chambers of her body, Yes I will."\ \ "She was trying to pretend she didn't need me, shutting down the part of herself that had so closely been my attendant for as long as I have been this side of earth. As if there weren't blood on her hands, too, oh, finding her exit, finding her sweet second life after me. There is no life after me, Neve. There is nothing after me, only us."\ \ This is a story of losing yourself, finding yourself and losing yourself all over again. It is a story that shows the control of other external factors on us, in this case, its Baby, an orchid that eats people. And the best way to describe Baby?\ \ "A wolf in orchid's clothing."\ \ Its a story of all the things you carry sorrow for but never want again\ \ "The ache this gave her was dull, not sharp. You can feel sorrow of a thing that is gone without wanting it back, like mourning the version of yourself who was happy — for whom this was enough."\ \ And finally, its a story about decay, about loving things that are harmful and toxic to you (or people)\ \ "She was simply acting out, we knew. It was a lot to hold. Not everyone had our fortitude, our peace when faced with a dead thing. Flowers are dead, the second they are cut from the ground they're gone, but they have the unique property of growing more beautiful as they take towards the wilt, the rot. The Neve part of us had known, in life, exactly how to handle death, both in her art and in her material quality of what it cost to feed the Baby part of us. This is why we were the perfect match. She had what was needed."\ \ And finally, the end of it all\ \ "The reek of disaster would float over the schools and to the motorway. For miles, people would wonder what it was, the stench. How disaster carries."\ \ \ \ Thank you to Titan Publisher and the author for a physical Arc of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. I truly loved this book in a different way and I hope you decide to pick it up and give it a try.\ \ Join for free or login](https://cozysabie.binderybooks.com/item/TvzqmxPTDRcuvnkQgKK0/)
Eat The Ones you Love: A Plant eating humans and casting horror on a small town
Read all about the horror Baby, a human eating plant casts on this small town in Ireland in Eat the Ones you Love
1 book
3
Celestial\ \ Steph\ \ • Mar 17 2025
Join for free
Women in Horror (60 recs!) | recording & thank you
24 books
2
Boozhoo Books\ \ Naomi\ \ • Mar 16 2025
RECORDING: Women In Horror Panel
YouTube link to Women in Horror Celebration, all of the (most of the) books discussed, info about our Discord bookclubs
62 books
2